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Pictured: Luis Cassiano is the founder of Teto Verde Favela, a nonprofit that teaches favela residents in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, how to build their own green roofs as a way to beat the heat. He's photographed at his house, which has a green roof.

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"Cassiano is the founder of Teto Verde Favela, a nonprofit that teaches favela residents how to build their own green roofs as a way to beat the heat without overloading electrical grids or spending money on fans and air conditioners. He came across the concept over a decade ago while researching how to make his own home bearable during a particularly scorching summer in Rio.

A method that's been around for thousands of years and that was perfected in Germany in the 1960s and 1970s, green roofs weren't uncommon in more affluent neighborhoods when Cassiano first heard about them. But in Rio's more than 1,000 low-income favelas, their high cost and heavy weight meant they weren't even considered a possibility.

That is, until Cassiano decided to team up with a civil engineer who was looking at green roofs as part of his doctoral thesis to figure out a way to make them both safe and affordable for favela residents. Over the next 10 years, his nonprofit was born and green roofs started popping up around the Parque Arará community, on everything from homes and day care centers, to bus stops and food trucks.

When Gomes da Silva heard the story of Teto Verde Favela, he decided then and there that he wanted his home to be the group's next project, not just to cool his own home, but to spread the word to his neighbors about how green roofs could benefit their community and others like it.

Pictured: Jessica Tapre repairs a green roof in a bus stop in Benfica, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Relief for a heat island

Like many low-income urban communities, Parque Arará is considered a heat island, an area without greenery that is more likely to suffer from extreme heat. A 2015 study from the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro showed a 36-degree difference in land surface temperatures between the city's warmest neighborhoods and nearby vegetated areas. It also found that land surface temperatures in Rio's heat islands had increased by 3 degrees over the previous decade.

That kind of extreme heat can weigh heavily on human health, causing increased rates of dehydration and heat stroke; exacerbating chronic health conditions, like respiratory disorders; impacting brain function; and, ultimately, leading to death.

But with green roofs, less heat is absorbed than with other low-cost roofing materials common in favelas, such as asbestos tiles and corrugated steel sheets, which conduct extreme heat. The sustainable infrastructure also allows for evapotranspiration, a process in which plant roots absorb water and release it as vapor through their leaves, cooling the air in a similar way as sweating does for humans.

The plant-covered roofs can also dampen noise pollution, improve building energy efficiency, prevent flooding by reducing storm water runoff and ease anxiety.

"Just being able to see the greenery is good for mental health," says Marcelo Kozmhinsky, an agronomic engineer in Recife who specializes in sustainable landscaping. "Green roofs have so many positive effects on overall well-being and can be built to so many different specifications. There really are endless possibilities.""

Pictured: Summer heat has been known to melt water tanks during the summer in Rio, which runs from December to March. Pictured is the water tank at Luis Cassiano's house. He covered the tank with bidim, a lightweight material conducive for plantings that will keep things cool.

A lightweight solution

But the several layers required for traditional green roofs — each with its own purpose, like insulation or drainage — can make them quite heavy.

For favelas like Parque Arará, that can be a problem.

"When the elite build, they plan," says Cassiano. "They already consider putting green roofs on new buildings, and old buildings are built to code. But not in the favela. Everything here is low-cost and goes up any way it can."

Without the oversight of engineers or architects, and made with everything from wood scraps and daub, to bricks and cinder blocks, construction in favelas can't necessarily bear the weight of all the layers of a conventional green roof.

That's where the bidim comes in. Lightweight and conducive to plant growth — the roofs are hydroponic, so no soil is needed — it was the perfect material to make green roofs possible in Parque Arará. (Cassiano reiterates that safety comes first with any green roof he helps build. An engineer or architect is always consulted before Teto Verde Favela starts a project.)

And it was cheap. Because of the bidim and the vinyl sheets used as waterproof screening (as opposed to the traditional asphalt blanket), Cassiano's green roofs cost just 5 Brazilian reais, or $1, per square foot. A conventional green roof can cost as much as 53 Brazilian reais, or $11, for the same amount of space.

"It's about making something that has such important health and social benefits possible for everyone," says Ananda Stroke, an environmental engineering student at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who volunteers with Teto Verde Favela. "Everyone deserves to have access to green roofs, especially people who live in heat islands. They're the ones who need them the most." ...

It hasn't been long since Cassiano and the volunteers helped put the green roof on his house, but he can already feel the difference. It's similar, says Gomes da Silva, to the green roof-covered moto-taxi stand where he sometimes waits for a ride.

"It used to be unbearable when it was really hot out," he says. "But now it's cool enough that I can relax. Now I can breathe again."

-via NPR, January 25, 2025

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Cat, thinking it's alone: STOP DEFYING ME, I WILL FIGHT YOU, YOU PIECE OF CRAP

Cat, in presence of human: oh no I'm just a little guy, I'm just a little birthday boy

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I have some news for members of the united states armed forces who feel like they are pawns in a political game and their assignments being unnecessary.

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Saw a post about how halal and kosher meat will likely be the only reliably safe options in the US because their safety and cleanliness standards aren't dictated by what's the barest legal minimum that government food safety regulations demand.

So you're like 5 years away from "ever notice how the musulmans and jews never get sick from bad meat? clearly this is proof that they are poisoning us" right now.

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This is officially the world's oldest marketing scam.

Via stavvers.bsky.social: "ea nasir is back baby awooo"

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Nimble:

nimble, a border collie-papillon mix, wins the 12” class in the 2024 masters agility championship. the first time a mixed breed has won at westminster ever.

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You know the oboe (I think) theme from Sleeping Beauty, the bit when Maleficent opens up the spooky green tunnel in the wall, leading to the one hidden spinning wheel in the kingdom? Yeah, that motif starts playing as you walk towards these trees.

(I wore out our VHS tape of Sleeping Beauty when I was a kid)

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Much like the ~learning styles~ discourse that so many people learned for several years, there's something valuable somewhere in there, but some people over-apply the idea and ruin it.

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Our Eugenics Are Different

tbh it’s bc everyone thinks “see when it’s MY time to wear the boot, it’s all actually gonna work bc I know who the REAL deviants are”

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This, too, is Yuri, and I must learn.

Yuri Gagarin, the hobbyist photographer, at home with his wife.

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This is a slippery slope to cricket bats.

oh so the Yankees made their bats thicker and hit 20 runs bc of it and the league is just like yeah they're allowed to do that?? this whole time apparently it's been perfectly legal to just change the bats to make it easier and no one tried it until right now?? 150 years this sport has been around and suddenly someone had a bright idea??

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I'm not absolutely sure how this genre is also Queer Culture, but that just feels right to me, so I'm claiming it.

Scarborough Faire by kayscreativecollection

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Remember when you had all those ports and a CD drive? Truly, those were the golden days.

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I just read this! Love a good Bisclavret plot.

What Big Teeth You Have by WishingStar

What Big Teeth You Have

by WishingStar

T, 33k, Wangxian

Summary: During his “night hunt” in Yiling, Lan Wangji is struck by a curse that transforms him into a wolf. He approaches Wei Wuxian for help. This is how he learns three things: 1) Wei Wuxian is afraid of dogs and dog-adjacent creatures. 2) Wei Wuxian will do literally anything for a friend in need. 3) Wei Wuxian considers Lan Wangji to be... possibly more than a friend?!? Kay's comments: CQL canon! Lan Wangji gets caught after his visit to the Burial Mounds and turned into a wolf. Now, Wei Wuxian has to a) find out that the terryfying wolf is Lan Wangji and b) not run away in fear because big terryfying wolf. I really loved this and especially the chapters leading up to the climax had me completely hooked and forced me to binge. I was so scared for Wangxian! Excerpt: Ah. Wei Ying is up a tree. He sits on a sturdy branch, well over Lan Wangji’s head, his feet drawn up and one arm wrapped around the trunk for support. He holds a bow and some arrows, but he hasn’t nocked any. He’s… afraid, but doing his best to hide it. Lan Wangji remembers his request and takes several steps backwards, a goodwill gesture. “Can you understand what I’m saying?” Wei Ying asks. Yes. Yes! He rears up, instinctively reaching out. Wei Ying gasps and squeezes his eyes shut, clutching the tree tighter, and his fear-scent spikes. “Can you sit down? Please? Can you just—sit?” Lan Wangji sits. He waits while Wei Ying recovers his composure. His tail sweeps an arc behind him, back and forth, without his input. Are all tails like this? It strikes him as a liability. “Okay. Ah, okay. Stay sitting, don’t move. Ah… Raise your right paw for yes, and your left paw for no. Can you understand me?” Lan Wangji raises his right paw.

pov lan wangji, canon divergence, animal transformation, wolf lan wangji, case fic, fix-it, angst with a happy ending, love confessions, golden core reveal, wei wuxian has a fear of dogs, hurt/comfort, friends to lovers

~*~

(Please REBLOG as a signal boost for this hard-working author if you like – or think others might like – this story.)

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If you don't Like pedophiles, why do you use the language of consent to advocate for making it easier for them to rape children?

First off, I ABHOR pedophiles. I don't just dislike them.

Second, I'm not sure exactly what you're saying but I believe children should be children.

Don't stress them out with the talks of the birds and the bees. Don't try and force them to understand something they won't understand or might scare them.

Traditionally, we have learned about sex ed around 13 - 16

Any earlier and it might actually frighten them

And why should they know? They aren't having sex and sick fucks shouldn't even be thinking about them having sex.

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That's as many as four ten billions. And that's terrible.

So this is definitely a case of "we did not expect Harvard to fight back and we forgot they have billions of dollars and the best lawyers"

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It's like a more theological version of the line from Farmer Giles of Ham, "he was a grammarian, and could doubtless see further into the future than many others." We see you, JRR, you adorable nerd.

I just dipped into Appendix F for an unrelated reason, and I think it’s funny that out of everything Sauron ever did — a master craftsman and teacher, a commander and conqueror, a deceiver and seducer, who achieved so much and, even in defeat, usually came verrrry close and tended just to reappear later all the stronger — one thing he utterly failed at was making Black Speech the common language of all his servants. He made grammar and vocab and syntax, and then the orcs could never figure out how to use his system. They ended up with such a hodge podge of fragmented, bastardized versions of the language that they were often incomprehensible to each other and had to fall back on Westron, the language of their enemies, to be understood even within Mordor.

It feels extremely JRR to me that he would let his Big Bad Villain kill and maim and enslave and despoil the environment, but he simply couldn’t allow Sauron to succeed at…linguistics.